What is a cake, everyone knows. This is a sweet dessert made from baked pastry with cream and various additives. This patron of anniversaries and anniversaries is loved by all: both men and women. And children can not imagine a holiday without such a sweet treat.
Modern pastry chefs prepare such cakes that their heads are full of admiration and surprise. After all, how can you create masterpieces worthy of the royal family from a piece of dough, filling and decoration? The secrets and subtleties of making cakes are often passed on from master to student, from family to family, keeping the secret of the “secret ingredient”. But what kind of delicacy is this?
Cake Definition
A confectionery product, most often sweet, consisting of several layers glued with cream or jam, is called a cake. They can be made from flour or eggs, jelly-like or mixed. On top of such a dish can be decorated in a variety of ways: cream flowers, fresh fruit or icing, marmalade, mastic or marzipan. Perhaps that is why the Italians called this dessert "cake." This word in translation from Italian means "something intricate, twisted."
In the past few decades, vegetable and meat cakes have become popular , which do not consist of dough, but are named so because of the appearance and method of serving. In them, the layers are stacked on top of each other and smeared with a viscous bonding mass. Cakes differ in the composition of the dough (the method of preparation and what cakes are made of) and in form and method of preparation: without baking and with heat treatment.
Classification by composition
By composition, cakes are divided into:
- Biscuit. The basis is heavily beaten eggs and a little flour. The cake is light and very soft, even without cream.
- Puff. They are prepared from a large number of very thin cakes or puff pastry. It differs from others in high calorific value due to the presence of oil in the dough.
- Sand. The fat-based dough is dry and crumbly. Often the layers are coated with fruit fillings and oil creams.
- Honey. The dough is prepared on the basis of honey. The cake turns out magnificent, it is well impregnated with any kind of cream.
- Waffle. They are prepared from waffle cakes baked in a waffle iron or bought in a supermarket. Low-calorie dough is to the liking of fighters for harmony.
- Jelly. Most of these cakes are a cross between soufflé and blanmange, which do not require baking.
Classification by appearance and method of preparation
What is a cake? Goodies of this kind are:
- One-tier cakes consist of one "floor", the top of which is usually decorated with inscriptions, cream flowers or decorations of various kinds.
- Two-tier cakes consist of two levels. They are sometimes made from different types of dough or cream.
- Combined cakes are those that are complicated by the confectioner's design idea: three or more tiers, a diverse form of each level, with various types of fillings and impregnations, with figures from mastic depicting the whole story. It can also be a combination of a two-tier cake, in which one level is biscuit and the second is fruit and jelly.
- Baked in an oven, microwave, slow cooker, waffle iron or in a pan.
- No baking. Such cakes are very popular among lovers of healthy nutrition and people with limited free time, because it is no secret that it takes less time to make ice cream cake than the famous Bird's Milk or Esterhazy.
Also, cakes have a division into classic and modern. The first are the well-known Sacher, Prague, Kiev Cake and Napoleon, in which the recipe has been unchanged for several centuries. In modern cakes, the attitude to the recipe is more loyal.
Is pie a cake too?
What is a cake already figured out. But the pie also contains a layer of baked dough and sweet filling, but why is it ranked as a separate category of dishes? What is the difference? Pie or cake: how to distinguish?
Everything is very simple: the pie is the great-grandfather of the cake, which has only a few layers of dough and one filling. There are at least 3 or 4 in the cake. There are no fillings for such a treat. Cakes contain only impregnation, cream and decorations. This is precisely the main difference. Pie and cake also differ from each other in appearance. Agree, baking looks different. The cake is simpler even when trimmed with pieces of dough. But cakes often amaze even the seasoned gourmet sweet tooth.
First mention in history
When the first cakes appeared , the story is silent. But already at the time of Pharaoh Pepionkh (2200 BC) sesame, honey and milk sweets were prepared, similar in appearance to our honey treats. A piece of such a cake from the tomb of this pharaoh is still stored in Vienna, and more precisely in the museum of provisions. Over time, the appearance and content of the goodies underwent changes.
The first multi-tiered wedding cakes were presented in the UK in the 18th century by local pastry chefs. Candles for such a dessert were the first to install Persians. In their country, there was a romantic way to open the heart and soul to a person with a burning candle in the cake.
When did the treat really appear? The name “cake” is more than 2000 years old, the Italians already called dough cakes with various decorations, and the cake maker, that is, the confectioners in a modern way, still called “tortayo”.